Should You Rebrand or Redesign Your Website? Which Comes First?

Sometimes a website isn't working because the website is bad. Sometimes it's doing a perfectly good job of communicating a brand that stopped reflecting the business years ago. These are very different problems, but they often arrive in my inbox as the same request: we need a new website.

Because I work across brand strategy and web design, I'm not particularly interested in recommending an expensive new logo when what you actually need is better navigation. I'd rather figure out what isn't working before making you pay to rebuild something twice.

Find out whether the business or website is confusing people

Are the right customers reaching your site but failing to find the services? Or are people misunderstanding the business long before they get there? One might be a digital experience problem, while the other suggests an issue with positioning.

I start by looking at what you sell now and how customers currently understand it. I also want to know whether the business has outgrown its original audience. A website refresh cannot correct an offer that hasn't been clearly defined.

When I'd start with brand strategy

If you've changed who you serve, moved into a different price category or expanded beyond your original offer, the brand needs to make sense first. Otherwise we build a beautiful website for the previous version of your business.

The Designer Drinks Co needed to feel like a refined expert partner rather than a technical commodity supplier. That positioning should be clear before deciding what the homepage says or how the visual language works.

Work it through for your own business

When I wouldn't change the identity at all

If your audience recognises the brand and understands your value, but the site is hard to use on mobile or buries important information, a website redesign may be enough. There's no prize for changing everything simply because the old website is frustrating.

I'd investigate the page structure, user journey and technical obstacles first. Sometimes the issue is genuinely digital and the brand can stay intact.

A real client example: the website had to come first

A client recently came to me for a website. I said I'd be happy to help and asked her to send through her branding, which is a pretty normal part of starting a web project. What arrived wasn't really an identity system. It was the business name typed out with a photograph alongside it, being treated as a logo. A photograph isn't a substitute for an identity mark, and I wasn't going to pretend it would work like one.

She wasn't in a position to invest in branding as well, and I respected that. So I recommended using just the name as text, with no borrowed iconography for now. It lets people concentrate on the business name and avoids attaching the brand to a makeshift symbol that could become a problem later. If she decides to invest in a proper identity down the track, we've left room for that instead of building a new website around a bad logo.

Would I recommend doing it in that order? No. It's a bit like furnishing a house before you've worked out where the rooms are going. Sometimes you still need somewhere to live, so you make the best decisions you can with the budget available. But I'd always prefer to work out the brand strategy first, then the identity, then design the website around them.

When the two projects need to be connected

Breathation required a broader brand world, including identity and creative direction extending into a physical space. Any digital expression should come from that same thinking.

For a complete rebuild, I would phase the work. Positioning and the visual system come first, then the website structure, messaging and design. The phases are connected, but shouldn't be lumped together into a vague single deliverable.

A lesson from Resonance Place

For Resonance Place, the nine-post Instagram grid made information about corporate event production easier to find. It introduced the service, the approach and the founder without asking visitors to search through old posts.

A business website has the same responsibility to help people find useful answers. If the identity is strong, the more valuable change may simply be making that information easier to navigate.

The next decision is yours

For a real example of the work, see the current ReWorded portfolio on the current ReWorded website.

If you're weighing up what your business needs, explore my current services or browse my recent projects.